Comic Books

Along with models, comic books was a love of mine as a kid. I'd still be buying them if they were not so dang expensive. Also, they have changed from the days of old. Now a days, comics are more about stunning art. In my day... less so about the art, and more so about story content. I prefer the latter.

Every Tuesday I'd ride my bike to a Rexall drugstore that was maybe 7 miles from home. It was on Tuesday that they put out the new releases. What a thrill. Ride there, find the new ones, ride back, go to room, read, and escape into an alternate world.

Reading comics was a fantastic adventure. I was a bit out of the box. Most kids liked the Marvel superheroes. Not me. I read comics like, Borris Karloff, Twilight Zone, Turok Son of Stone, Swamp Thing, and amongst several others. I still have them stored away.

I remember Sgt Rock for sure,the Archies,I remember American soldiers getting lost and running into dinosaurs,and maybe the same thing with Confederate soldiers.

How the ads,you could buy like hundreds of plastic soldiers for like 99 cents,X-ray glasses,and forth.

Yep. I even remember 10 cents.

Yes! The ads! Other things like spud guns, ant farms, even your own personal submarine for less than $5. Lol.

Btw. I should clarify. I don't mean to impugn anyone that liked/likes the super hero series. I wish I did collect them because they are worth the most money. I have always felt like an odd duck. That is what I meant by outside of the box. No offense.

I remember Sgt Rock for sure,the Archies,I remember American soldiers getting lost and running into dinosaurs,and maybe the same thing with Confederate soldiers.

How the ads,you could buy like hundreds of plastic soldiers for like 99 cents,X-ray glasses,and forth.

Yep. I even remember 10 cents.

Yes! The ads! Other things like spud guns, ant farms, even your own personal submarine for less than $5. Lol.

Btw. I should clarify. I don't mean to impugn anyone that liked/likes the super hero series. I wish I did collect them because they are worth the most money. I have always felt like an odd duck. That is what I meant by outside of the box. No offense.

Ha! How was it? I remember thinking this thing must be made out of paper or something. Not long ago I came across some photos of it and I was surprised that it had controls in the interior. I thought, Dang! For five bucks, that offered some serious play time. What did you think of it?

I also collected a LOT of "odball " stuff too, mostly Atlas comic's. Which most comic collecter's will tell you "Aint worth Diddly" ( there not even in the comic buyer's guide. That's how worthless they are.)

Dont worry about the thumbprint, paint it Rust , and call it "Battle Damage".

hHere's a horror story that many of you may have heard before or even experienced. At one time I had many comics like the first couple years of Ironman, Spiderman, Hulk, Justice league, Fantastic Four and many others. When I came back from my first tour in South east Asis I found out that my Mother had given all of them to kids in the neighborhood or just tossed them. The same with my small stash of models and a rather large collection of Baseball cardsfrom the 50s and 60s along with various collector cards from different T.V. shows.. I never understood the reasoning behind this action except that maybe she thought that I had outgrown them or would soon. One disturbing theory I heard from a family member was that she thought that I might not be comming back from the war. Who's to say.

I also collected a LOT of "odball " stuff too, mostly Atlas comic's. Which most comic collecter's will tell you "Aint worth Diddly" ( there not even in the comic buyer's guide. That's how worthless they are.)

You had a lot of them. Tim, do you still have them all? If not, what happened to them?

hHere's a horror story that many of you may have heard before or even experienced. At one time I had many comics like the first couple years of Ironman, Spiderman, Hulk, Justice league, Fantastic Four and many others. When I came back from my first tour in South east Asis I found out that my Mother had given all of them to kids in the neighborhood or just tossed them. The same with my small stash of models and a rather large collection of Baseball cardsfrom the 50s and 60s along with various collector cards from different T.V. shows.. I never understood the reasoning behind this action except that maybe she thought that I had outgrown them or would soon. One disturbing theory I heard from a family member was that she thought that I might not be comming back from the war. Who's to say.

That is an awful story, man. Sorry to hear that happened. Ugh. What a bummer.

You had a lot of them. Tim, do you still have them all? If not, what happened to them?

In 1996 I made the mistake of taking the box full of Batman comic's to work with me. I was checking the Overstreet buyer's guid for pricing my collection ( I was going to buy something... dont remember what.)

I was working in the movie theater's at the time so I had a lot of time to myself in-between running the projector's . Well , going through 600 or 700 comic's take's time . So after my shift was over, I had only gotten about 1/3 of the way through them. I "L O C K E D " them in the Electrical room ( where they "should"have been safe.) and went home for the night.

There were only three keys to that room. I had one, The owner had one, and the janitor had one. The janitor was my roommate , so I wasn't worried about him.

Turn's out that my roommate had the night off and I didnt know about it. The owner gave HIS key to a Half-wit, drug addict ( who I knew and didnt want anything to do with) and had him "Fill-in" for my roommate. He came into the theater about 1 AM .... with a bunch of his "SCUMBAG" friend's , and procceded to break into ...

1: The safe !

2: most of the candy in the concession stand

3 : Some of the electronic sound system stuff

And 4; My comic's which were sitting on the sound stuff !

I could go on and on about the Police "FIASCO" that ensued . Needless to say he got away with all of it ! And I sold off all my remaining comic's and never looked at another one since. Karma caught up with him about 2 year's later. He got divorced ( hie wife was a piece of work herself) and he lost most of his worldly belonging's during that. Shortly after, he was caught making meth amphetamine ( because the hotel room where they were making it BLEW UP L O L ) and went to prison.

I figured out after all that , that he sold my comic's for $200 ( actual value somewhere around $5800 ) so at least I know he got "Ripped off" too.

Dont worry about the thumbprint, paint it Rust , and call it "Battle Damage".

In the mid-50's, I had a subscription to Dell Comics' "Tarzan" comic books. I really enjoyed those, and amassed a big collection over the years. I still have a few of the jumbo "Jungle Book" special editions. Also like Superman and Archie, and of course "Tom Corbett, Space Cadet!"

I doubt it's worth much. One never knows I guess. For me it is the memories that comes with them. And that is where the value is.

A comic book is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it. Most of my collection was Fair to very good/fine ( I only had a few MINT comic's) and I tended to grade them at less than what the book said. Truth be told, I spent more money on mylar bag's, acid free backing board's , and "Archival box's than most of the comic's were worth. ( my total collection was around 3000 comic book's .)

I do remember selling Batman # 28 for $145 ( it was in "poor" condition) sometime before all this mess happend, and there were a few Batman comic's that I had left at home that night. So he didnt get them all. But after that, I just lost my will to collect them.

Bakster

Yeah karma got the guy but sorry this happened to you.

I would still like to find him "in a dark ally".......

EDIT: Ther is NOTHING BETTER than the smell of an old comic, as you read it in an attic, on a rainy day !

Dont worry about the thumbprint, paint it Rust , and call it "Battle Damage".

Sea Monkeys! When my dad told me they were brine shrimp, which I was familiar with, I thought “man what a rip-off!” My neighbor’s kid bought the big army set, and although the soldiers were flat, we had a pretty good time playing with them in his back yard. They worked great as targets for carpet bombing.

My parents and teachers were concerned I wasn’t developing reading skills, so my dad bought me some comics to get me to read something. But like stamp and coin collecting, it didn’t appeal to me. It seems no one saw me sneaking off to the library during recess to read all the airplane books. I didn’t know who Shazam was, but I knew the XB-70 had a double layer skin with a brazed honeycomb metal structure in between. That’s the stuff I dreamed of in elementary school.

Only later on in life did I enjoy reading comics. Some of my friends in high school bought stuff like X-Men and Daredevil (I especially liked “The Deadliest Night of My Life”), but I liked Judge Dredd best. Watching the Dredd-ful Stallone movie made me want to scream. Or cry. It was bad. The Karl Urban version was more deserving of the Stallone budget. The board game was a heck of a lot of fun!

When I started working, one of my coworkers bought “Spawn” and “The Maxx”, which he graciously shared with us. We also bought a lot of MacFarlane “inaction” figures.

A good friend of mine had a huge comic collection in his late teens,he quit his job and turned it into a comic store later in life which he still operates.Kinda like us quitting our jobs and having a LHS

When I got married the first time, I started moving all my "stuff" to our new apartment.

1st, all my models were gone. Mom gave them to the neighbors kids. (We've heard that before) Her and dad always thought that building models was a waste of time and money so they were happy to chuck them all as they thought now that I was "settling down with a wife and probably kids", I wouldn't have the time or money to indulge in building models. Wow, were they wrong.

2nd, almost all my baseball, football, etc cards were gone. Mom threw them in the trash. (heard that before too) Managed to save 1 shoebox full which I sold many years later for the grand total of $250 as there were no complete sets and they weren't in very good shape.

3rd, All the comics were gone too. She put them out with the trash. (heard that before too)

There is one funny side to all this. One day after my second marriage, the wife and I went to the mall where I was going to try to sell the above cards. While he was looking them over, she went to the shop where the guy buys stamps, coins, gold,and etc. to see what she could get for her wedding ring from her ex. She knew what it was worth but the guy only offered her $15. She was so upset that he only offered $15 for her diamond ring but I got $250 for a beat up shoebox with a bunch of dirty, mangled cards. Lol,lol,lol,lol,lol,lol,lol,lol.

Jim... Hearing these stories of collectibles ending up in landfills is heart wrenching. I guess the moral of the story is, don't leave your stuff where the parents can get at it. I suppose my stuff survived all these years because I took it with me wherever I moved. I can almost guarantee my mom would have thrown it out too. They are just too happy we moved out of the house! And... chomping at the bit to refurbish the now vacant room. Throw out everything! Do it before he changes his mind and comes back! Hurry! Lol.

Note to you young people still living at home. Find a safe place for this stuff. Don't leave it at home.

Good that you got a little money for the mangled cards. That is funny about the wedding ring. It's probably easier to resell cards than a wedding ring.

Believe it or not, after getting out all my old comics from the 80's and 90's out from storage in the garage, 4 months back I started collecting them again. If you think commics are expensive in the US, feel for us poor suckers Down Under. A $.50 comic in the US is just under $10.00 here which is a complete rip off, especially when each weekly trip into the commic book shop would see me leaving with 5 or 6 issues. That was seriously cutting into my modelling budget.

I have since found that subscribing from Marvel directly in the US, I can get them for around $4.75 delivered. I just have to wait a little longer for them to arrive. So I do that with Cap, Iron Man, a couple of X-Men titles and a few more, and the rest I either buy on the Marvel App and read them on my iPad or computer, or read all the back issues I can handle on the Marvel Unlimited App for a reasonable subscription fee.

I did have a modest collection of comic books as a kid in the 80s. I started collecting baseball cards too back then. But I haven’t seen either collection in decades. I’m hoping that my folks still have them. I’m curious how that Nolan Ryan rookie and Ken Griffey Jr faired Over the years.

But there was one occasion about 8 years ago or so. A fellow aging sci fi nerd was in need of cash, and sold his whole Robotech comic collection to me for a modest amount. Since I really loved the franchise, i actually did read through them all.

Believe it or not, after getting out all my old comics from the 80's and 90's out from storage in the garage, 4 months back I started collecting them again.

Oh boy. Is this what is in store for me? I will start collecting again? Why not!

That sounds expensive, for sure. I have not checked the cost of comics of late. I don't see them around in the stores anymore. They use to be sold at every pharmacy. Not now, and not for many years they don't.

Thanks for sharing. These are interesting stories that you guys are posting. Keep em coming.